There is no lower form of life on a film set than the "extra". This is life as seen from the bottom.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

2 Reversible

Day 2 on the set with Tom Selleck and the rest of the cast and crew of the movie "Reversible Errors". Coming soon to CBS.

It began with a member of the crew asking me if the flights got out of Vancouver last night, what with all the rain. Seems she had relatives on the flight.

I had to reply that I wasn't an airline employee, I just played one on TV.

On the second day I spend almost all of the time in Extra's Holding. My call time is 8:45 am and I go to set once around 1:00 pm or so for about five minutes, three takes of a brief scene and that's it. At 3:00 I'm wrapped; it's been 6 hours from the crew call and they're not ready to go to lunch yet. The union rule is that if you go past 6 hours with no lunch, you have to pay everyone a penalty. I know this and I'm looking at my watch as it creeps up toward three, fully expecting an A.D. to come in and tell me and the others we who came in at 0845 that we're wrapped. At 3:00 pm on the dot, someone comes in and tells us we're wrapped.

But before that....

I almost killed Jim Rebhorn as I was coming out of the washroom. It was one of those moments where two people have reached the door at the same time, completely unaware that there is someone moving toward them from the other side. In George Carlin speak, "You are now an accident waiting to happen!" We narrowly missed a serious collision and laughed nervously at each other. Then he makes a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and pointing it at me he says, "Ken. Right?"

I was both shocked and awed, agog that he remembered my name after a very brief and minor encounter on the first day (I'm an extra remember?).